Recommend me 3
Just before Christmas I suffered from blogging burn-out. Having our first son in January last year knocked me for six and the consequences became apparent towards the end of the year. So I made a bit of a dramatic decision (at least for me).
I unsubscribed from every blog I subscribed to via Google Reader.
Now I’m suffering from information under-load (if there’s such a term). I feel a bit disconnected in terms of my main areas of interest: education, technology, productivity. So, reader, I need your help! Which blogs would you recommend in these areas? Are there any that you don’t miss a single post from? Check out my Trends provided courtesy of Google Reader below:
Once upon a time I’d read 1,000 items in a day, never mind a month. Of course, I want quality over quantity.
I’ve shown you mine – care to show me yours? 😀
I’m not going to recommend three. Instead, I’m going to applaud the endeavor and follow suit. I don’t read my aggregator very often anymore. I think it’s time to clean house and start again.
Very good call…
I’m always impressed when someone dumps everything and starts fresh. It’s seems worthwhile, but I can’t make the leap.
dy/dan and think:lab are two of my favorite education blogs. Slouching Past 40 is one of my favorite parenting blogs.
Looking at your old trends I'd be tempted to go back to Lifehacker and also DownloadSquad. You could try filtering them for key phrases using Yahoo pipes if you get too much coming through?
I’m struggling with this question now – trying to decide how much I actually read of what I subscribe to. Going to my Reader shouldn’t be an “ugh – 300 unread items” inducing experience.
Look it’s taken me this long to catch up with just your blog again! You are right of course, quality wins over quantity and there are only 24 hours in a day…
Moreover family life wins over virtual life any day – you can’t catch up with them days/weeks/later – that time is gone forever ;0)
Argh. I came here all hoping I could score some more sweet ed-tech blogs from the comments! I’ll have to go back and trawl through Steve’s list again, I guess.
Like Steve, I'd like to applaud the idea. I'm conscious of the fact that much of what it is my reader at the moment isn't relevant to me, or the same post recycled half a dozen times.
My current way of dealing with it has been to get away from the idea that my reader has to be at zero. It's been bubbling along at between 100-200 unread items for the last few weeks, and I've been dipping in and out when I have time. I'm no longer obsessed with getting my comments in 'now', after all the posts aren't going anywhere, and Twitter alerts me to anything I want to get involved in 'real time', if I happen to have a spare few minutes.
Anyway, three blogs. I think Dy/Dan (http://blog.mrmeyer.com) would be at the top of that list. I know you don't always agree with Dan, but I always go away from his blog rethinking something I'd been taking for granted.
I'd also add Ewan (http://edu.blogs.com/edublogs/) as someone who is both UK focussed and good at pointing out key posts on other blogs.
For your third, if you want to keep education focused, then I'd go for Jeff (http://www.thethinkingstick.com/) as someone who says something relevant, thought provoking or practical in pretty much every post. However, I'm increasingly adding non-edublogs to my feed reader, of which my current favourite is Seth Godin 9http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/)
No offense intended to anyone whose blog I haven't listed! (I wonder if that's why noone else has risen to your challenge?!)
The one thing I really do recommend though, is using the 'friends shared items' feature in Google Reader. It means I get the very best of the posts from blogs I don't subscribe to from people I trust to have similar interests to me. Sometimes I'll go on and subscribe to the shared bog, but very often I simply rely on my friends to serve up the best of the best, straight to my feed reader!